An X account for the Sesame Avenue character Elmo has been focused by an unknown hacker who posted antisemitic and racist messages.
The profile is adopted by greater than 650,000 customers on the social community – and often posts upbeat and motivational updates.
Sunday’s messages, which have since been deleted, known as for violence towards Jews, insulted Donald Trump, and referred to alleged recordsdata associated to Jeffrey Epstein.
In an announcement, Sesame Workshop mentioned the X account has now been secured – and described the posts uploaded to Elmo’s web page as “disgusting”.
That is the most recent controversy to befall Elon Musk’s platform in current days.
Final week, X’s AI chatbot Grok additionally produced content material with antisemitic tropes, which had been later eliminated and denounced as “inappropriate”.
Musk bought the web site, previously referred to as Twitter, again in 2022 – with extremist content material rising towards a backdrop of much less moderation.
Extra from Science, Local weather & Tech
The Anti-Defamation League, a US organisation that fights antisemitism, mentioned: “It’s appalling that Elmo’s official account, known for spreading kindness, was hacked solely to spread violent antisemitism.”
“Antisemitism on social media fosters the normalisation of anti-Jewish hate online and offline – and contributes to an increasingly threatening environment for Jewish people everywhere.”
Elmo’s account has not posted because the hack.